Machines are known for mixing and shaping pasta dough into the various shapes pasta is marketed in. Such a machine has a mixing chamber provided with a rotor that can mix the ingredients of the pasta dough together until they have the desired consistency. Associated with this mixing chamber is an extruder having an extruder chamber provided with an auger that receives the dough once it reaches the proper consistency and forces it out of the extruder chamber through a die having orifices of the shape appropriate to form the desired type of noodles. Such an apparatus allows pasta to be produced which is widely recognized as being vastly superior to the store-bought type.
Nonetheless such devices have several principal disadvantages. First of all, the rotor is turned with considerable force, as the pasta dough cannot be mixed and kneaded easily, so that the user must be protected from contact with the radially extending arms of the rotor. This is most simply done in an electrically powered device by providing a normally open switch in series with the motor, which switch is only closed when contacted by the lid of the device in the closed position thereof. Such an arrangement works adequately with devices having built-in motors, yet is completely unusable in a manual pasta machine. Furthermore such devices normally make it impossible to add ingredients to the dough in the mixing chamber while the rotor is turning.
Such machines also normally have a slider or gate which can block a passage between the mixing and extruding chambers. If for some reason this gate is left open before the dough is fully blended, some of the ingredients will find their way into the extruding chamber so as not only to spoil the dough in the chamber by loss of part of the ingredients so that the ingredients ratio is incorrect, but also to create in the extruding chamber a mess that is difficult to clean.
Another considerable problem with the known pasta machines is that they are extremely difficult to clean. The mixing chamber and extruding chamber must normally be painstakingly rinsed and sponged out in order to remove all traces of the pasta dough after each use. This operation can be extremely difficult, in particular since the device frequently incorporates a relatively heavy transmission, and in powered devices an electric motor. What is more when partially disassembled some of the powered pasta machines can create considerable potential for injury as parts that can be rotated by the motor are exposed to the user's hands. In fact the difficulty of cleaning these machines is typically listed as one of their main drawbacks by users of them.